Saturday, June 28, 2014

Thirty Days

The month of June has thirty days... and June is the month of my birth, and roses!

Anyway. I've been silent and absent and learning a bit of.. well... you shall see.

1. my home is a space for little kids to jump on the bed
2. our bodies were not designed for desk work
3. counting calories is a way for this woman to gain weight
4. changing roles is very hard
5. practicing whitespace...
6. stunning bits of clarity about the american faith tradition, which is so very different from my friends in India and Haiti

We are totally blessed in this new house. Every day I think of those that prayed and helped and I'm just amazed. What an extraordinary set of gifts we have been given! The open floor plan provides ample space for 30+ people to mingle, while the upstairs haven provides a place for children to laugh, run, jump and play!

The true reason for my silence and absence in the written and digital world rests on my physical body. I seem to be undergoing this thing called aging, and the exclusive toll thus far is to my right arm. Most specifically, my work has me at a desk for 8 hours a day, and so when I get home my shoulder and elbow are screaming in pain... leaving no room for any further use. They say its arthritis, pinched nerves, and a bit of a problem with a rib. I say, cut it off! They assure me that would be a worse situation... so I have settled into a delightful routine of ice, rest, ibuprofen, and physical therapy. Can there be a worse situation for a reader and periodic writer?

I spent the month tracking my food and exercise, which I cannot do much of, due to the right arm issue mentioned above. Anyway, I'm humbled to admit that I gained weight while watching what I eat, and I'm now again rather done with that. Back to what I know, that which assisted in 85 pound weight loss... I must take an axe to the fast food, the restaurant, and the coffee shop. I must also ditch the soda. And... I must start making my healthy breakfasts and lunches each morning. Go Team black coffee and water. YAY!

Roles... routines... and everything in between! SO, in the house I'm adapting to the older teenager; we have three in high school in the fall. They are cooking for one another while I'm at work, and even cooking for me some evenings! The house isn't particularly kept as well as a homemaker would have it, but for a stack of teenage girls it is quite fine indeed! In the community I'm releasing some well worn shoes for none at all. I'm going to walk barefoot for a while as I see what lies ahead on this path. And at the office, I've officially given my desk away. My space of employ for 5.75 years, given to another. The tasks have been divided for the two of us and we set off at a run this past Monday. This change is the most scary for me.... It is difficult to allow someone else to do what you've done so long... While working on new projects and growing in new ways. I'm still there, tucked in with a new view!

Whitespace... Here we dive into some things that are a little more personal and a little more about my faith. I picked up a book this past month and I didn't know what was in it. I'll be honest, I thought it was going to be a book about taking time to rest. Well. First let me say it was a very good book and I heartily recommend it: Finding Spiritual Whitespace: Awakening your soul to rest. I will say that in reading this book I was brought back to a stack of things in my life that I keep tucking back into the corners. They say appearances are deceiving, and I have to agree... Each of us puts on an appearance that we are comfortable sharing with the world, and over time, we can even begin to deceive ourselves. This deception of self most affects our relationship with God - who knows us most intimately... He knows the moments of our life that have caused us to wall off, to hide, to run, or to escape. He also knows the moments of our life which shape our understanding and beliefs about him. I challenge you to consider cracking this book!

A final bit for today. Having done a bit of traveling outside of the USA, I often wonder at the beliefs and practices of the church. In both Haiti and India, spiritual warfare is understood and prayer for illumination and against the demonic is common. I initially considered the fact that, well, we go to this baptist church, and baptists are very low key in their faith practices.. but the more I read, the more I have the opportunity to stumble upon things that make me fall of my chair (if I'm sitting on one!) Here Goes:

It was Gerald Heard who said : "Newton banished God from nature, Darwin banished Him from life, and now Freud has banished Him from His last stronghold, the soul." I wish to introduce that, if for great numbers of our contemporaries the effect of Newton, Darwin, and Freud has been to banish the divine, it has even more emphatically been to banish the demonic. St Paul's "Principalities and powers" - the "spirit forces of evil" whose malignant grip upon the souls called forth "a second Adam to the fight and to the rescue" - are now known, we are told, to have been mere apocalyptic imagination.

This may not cause you to aha quite as much as it caused me, when I read it in James Stewarts "A Faith to Proclaim" - but for me, it answered such a large question. Why is it that there is such a KEY difference between the peoples belief about spiritual warfare... ah... what the culture teaches the people! The influence of the church on peoples beliefs has diminished quite a lot in the American culture, when JS wrote this book it was still the church that did much teaching... and the church was all over the board in his opinion! But now, it is culture that teaches us, even though the church teaches us much... the culture sways stronger, so much that it is more common for us to fight for the truth of creation in light of evolution... than it is for us to talk about the root of the issue